A Cyborg Among Robots
by Scultone
Summary: A young college student gets mixed up with the autobots after saving one of them from being car jacked. She wants to help them, but can she really leave her best friend and her dream behind?
1. Chapter 1

Sortie leaned back in her chair, her stomach dropping when the seat started to tip over backwards. She quickly grabbed her desk and pulled her chair back upright. She looked at the notes that were sprawled across the desk and sighed. The information was nothing new. When would they actually get to the interesting stuff?

"Hey Sortie, can you come look at this?" Allie asked from across their dorm.

Sortie stood up and walked across the room. She pulled her thick, shoulder length, black hair into a ponytail before appraising her friend's notes.

"What about it?" She asked

"What is the question asking, exactly?" She pointed at question number seven.

"You are trying to find y, but," She pulled the pencil out from behind her ear and started to scribble out an equation. "You have to use this to solve it. The one you were using before is for finding x."

Allie plugged in the numbers and solved the problem. Nodding when she realized where she had gone wrong.

"I still don't understand why you don't want to major in math of some kind. You're practically a walking calculator." Allie said.

"Because neuroscience is more fun. And I'd rather be helping people than solving pi." She replied.

"Ha, neuroscience, fun." Allie said sarcastically.

"What? You find DNA fun. That stuff is so boring." Sortie stated.

"And then you're getting a minor in computer and automotive technology. How does your head not explode from all of that information?" Allie asked.

Sortie shrugged. "It makes more sense that people."

Allie shook her head and smiled. Everyone knew Sortie had terrible people skills. That's why people started calling her Sortie, because that's what it felt like they were in when dealing with her. Also, Rosemary didn't seem to suit her.

"I find it ironic that you want to help people when you absolutely hate most of them." Allie said.

"I don't hate you." Sortie replied.

"I know that. But it's just such a nice and caring thing to do, especially coming from one of the most confrontational people on the planet." She pointed out.

"Alright, fine. But you can blame my parents for letting my older brothers raise me. You would think that since they are super successful lawyers from Harvard that they would hire a baby sitter or something."

"I'll bet they knew that one day you would wind up in Yale and decided that your brothers would kill most of your brain cells so you couldn't get in."

"Well that didn't work out so well then, did it?"

Allie shrugged and returned to the mountain of math homework that her professor had assigned. Sortie sat back down and started to put her notes back into her binder. Ugh, her parents. They were lawyers, so they were almost never home so she was pretty much raised by her two older brothers. The three of them had been home schooled by a professional tutor that her parents had hired. So she never got a chance to meet kids her age until high school. By then she had turned into a fairly cold person and it only got worse. The kids in high school were so stupid, even in the advanced classes. Even now, Allie was one of the only people that she talked to.

Sortie stood up.

"I'm going to go check my bike." She announced.

"Okay." Allie replied, not looking up from her homework.

Sortie slid on her shoes and walked out the door. She marched straight to the parking lot and wove through the lines of expensive cars. In between a Corvette and a Ford F150 sat her motorcycle. In the grand scheme of things, it was a piece of junk. Her automotive technologies professor had given her the body of the bike and challenged her to rebuild it into a fully functional bike. She managed to get it running again and was working on tricking it out. But parts weren't cheap. She unlocked the helmet from the cord on the handle bars and put in on. She sat down and put the keys in the ignition. The engine jumped to life and sputtered a few times.

"Alright you junker, lets go for a drive." She said.

She pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the road that was surrounded by forest on either side. She wasn't heading anywhere in particular; she just wanted to clear her head. She slowed to a stop as she came to a four way intersection. A royal blue jeep rubicon was stopped next to her. She glanced at it before continuing on.

Bright, neon lights caught her eye. She slowed down and glanced over at it. It was just a restaurant. But as she scanned the rest of the parking lot she noticed an orange car. She swerved off the road and into the parking lot to get a better look. Holy cow, it was a Lamborghini Aventador. Who was the lucky bastard who owned that car? She stopped in a parking space a few rows over and stared at the car. Who cares if anyone noticed? She had never seen a Lamborghini and probably never would again.

She decided that since she was there she would go in the restaurant and get a drink. Allie wouldn't let her keep any drinks with caffeine in them in the dorm, and it had been months since she had last had a Coke. In the time that it took her to go in and get a drink and come back out, a black Lexus had pulled in next to the Lamborghini. There was a guy crouched by the drivers door and was fiddling with something.

"Hurry up!" A guy said, leaning out of the Lexus.

Was she witnessing a grand theft auto in progress? If she was, the guy trying to steal the Lamborghini was the dumbest thief alive. As soon as the owner reported the car stolen, there would be a hundred tips about its location. A Lamborghini wouldn't even blend in on campus. Then she noticed a sticker for one of Yale's fraternities on the front bumper of the car. No way. This idiot went to Yale?

She rolled over to the Lamborghini and stopped next to the guy.

"What do you want?" He demanded.

"Is that your car?" She asked, not really wanting to falsely accuse the guy.

"What's it to you?" He asked nervously.

It definitely was not his car.

"I hope you realize that this is the worst car for you to steal." She pointed out.

"Who says I'm stealing it?"

"Well the fact that you didn't just say that it was your car is pretty suspicious. And your escape car full of accomplices really isn't helping your case," She argued.

"Just get out of here, bitch. It's none of your business."

"What did you just call me?" She demanded.

"A bitch. What, are you stupid or something?"

Suddenly the car door flew open and it popped the guy in the face.

Sortie couldn't help but laugh as he was knocked to the ground and clutched his nose.

"Why the hell did you do that?" He demanded.

"I didn't do that." She shot back.

The guy stood up and stumbled to the Lexus and climbed in the passenger side door. The engine turned on and the car started to make a turn towards her.

"Time to go." Sortie said and revved her bike's engine.

She jumped the sidewalk that separated the road and the parking lot and sped down the street. The car was quickly gaining on her forcing her to speed up. This wasn't good. They could run her over if they really wanted to. She started going faster, which was incredibly nerve wracking. She didn't think that her bike could handle going much faster. The Lexus honked at her.

Suddenly, her bike sputtered and the breaks locked up. The Lexus couldn't stop fast enough and it rammed her back tire. She was ejected over the handle bars and flew through the air. Time seemed to slow down as she got closer to the pavement. She saw the panicked expressions of the guys in the car and her front tire getting closer to her head. She skidded across the pavement and her bike rolled right over her. For a second she couldn't feel any pain. Then it crashed over her all at once.

"!" She gasped and tried to force out a scream but nothing came out.

Blackness rapidly started to eat away at the corners of her vision until she lost consciousness completely.


	2. Chapter 2

Sideswipe was powered down in a parking lot in front of a human refueling station. He was exhausted and glad to finally get some time to rest. Ever since he and the other autobots had arrived on earth, Optimus Prime had been forcing them to search every inch of the planet in search of the allspark. Them being Ratchet, Arcee, Bumblebee, and himself.

He was woken up by an odd prodding in his side. There was a young human male crouched by his left side door sticking a thin metal pin into the lock on the side. After a search on the human's internet he discovered that the human was trying to pick the lock. Which meant he was being stolen. Slag it, he thought to himself. If he got stolen, who knows how long it would take him to get back. Bumblebee would never let him live it down and Optimus would be furious. He had to do something, but what? He couldn't just drive away, the human knew that he didn't have a driver and that would attract too much attention.

Then a female human rode over to his side on a motorcycle. She started talking to the male; Sideswipe prayed to Primus that she wasn't helping the thief. The conversation quickly escalated into a heated argument and the male called the female a bitch. She didn't look to happy about that, so he searched internet for the word.

Bitch: _noun_: a lewd or immoral woman, a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman- sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse. Something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant.

Wow, that was harsh. The male proceeded to call her a bitch again and asked if she was stupid. At that, Sideswipe popped his left door open and hit the male in the face. The female laughed at the male who was now lying on the ground holding his nose. The male recovered and climbed into the black car that was parked next to him. The female wheeled around on her motorcycle as the car started to move towards her. She jumped the narrow strip of tan pavement and onto the wider strip of black road. The car sped out of the parking lot after her.

Sideswipe revved his engine and followed the female. She just saved him from getting car jacked; he owed it to her to make sure she didn't get killed by the male in the black car. He did a quick scan of her motorcycle and found that it was in less than optimal condition. If she pushed it to move too fast, it might quit on her. He honked his horn once to let the black car know that it was being followed. The female's motorcycle sputtered to a complete stop and the black car rammed her.

He screeched to a stop as he watched the human skid across the road and get run over by her own bike. The black car stopped a few feet away from her for a moment, before turning around and driving away. What a bunch of cowards. Even if they weren't trying to hit her, which he didn't think they were, they shouldn't have left her alone to die. He quickly transformed and knelt down next to the female. She was oozing a strange red liquid. He searched the internet for it again and found out that it was blood. If she lost too much of it, she would die.

What was he supposed to do? He couldn't leave her to die, but he couldn't take her to a human hospital either.

"Ratchet, this is Sideswipe, come in." He announced over his comm. link.

"This is Ratchet, go ahead Sideswipe." A gruff voice responded.

"Umm, well, you see there is this female human who is damaged really badly and it is partially my fault. What should I do?" He asked.

"Please tell me you didn't hit her."

"No, it's a long story and she doesn't look like she can last for very long."

There was a sigh, "Alright, I might not know much about humans, but I'll see what I can do. I'm sending you my location."

"Thank you, Ratchet."

"Don't thank me yet."

Sideswipe picked up the female very carefully and then grabbed her bike. He walked off the road and into the trees in Ratchet's direction. He scanned the female. She was five feet and nine inches tall and weighed around 134 pounds; she was taller than the average human female according to google. She had black hair and he could see that her irises were coded for a pale blue color. He couldn't tell if she had any anomalies because of all of the injuries.

By the time he reached Ratchet, his servo was covered in blood.

"Primus, what happened?" Ratchet asked, appraising the damage.

"Well there was this male who was trying to car jack me and she tried to stop him. He started insulting her so I hit him with my door, then he got mad and started chasing her. Her bike stalled and he hit her and now she's like this." He rushed.

"You were almost stolen?" Ratchet asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, pretty much." Sideswipe replied.

"Well, she'll be lucky if I can save her at this point. She's in pretty bad shape." Ratchet said.

Sideswipe stood guard as the medic worked. It was several megacycles later when Ratchet spoke again.

"I've done everything I can. We'll just have to wait and see if she can power up." He said.


	3. Chapter 3

All Sortie could see was a bunch of colors and abstract shapes. Most of them in the left side of her field of vision started to turn some shade of blue. Then an odd feeling started to generate in her chest. It felt like a machine slowly powering up. The shapes started to form in to actual objects. There was something that looked like a tree and something else that looked like a human. It had a head and shoulders and arms, except for the fact that it was orange.

Wait, where was she? What was going on? She tried to sit up but her limbs felt dead. After a solid minute of concentrating she could feel her arms again. It felt like they were powering up like a computer. The power trickled down her torso and into her legs. She slowly lifted her arms to her eyes and rubbed them, in an attempt to clear them up. Her hands were freezing. She was starting to clear up but she could only see navy blue out of her left eye. She rubbed it again and a small, white dot appeared. It grew into a thin, horizontal line, which proceeded to widen until she could see.

She sat up, disregarding the protest from her muscles. There was a strange, mechanical sound, but she ignored it. She looked around and saw a huge, robotic foot to her left. She scrambled to get away from it only to run into something else. She looked up and saw a huge, humanoid robot.

The robot stared back at her curiously. She shot up and tried to run, but fell flat on her face. The robot crouched down and reached out for her.

She tried to cry out in protest, but I came out sounding like a computer's clicking and warbling. She kept making noise until she forced out a solid "NO!"

"I told you she wouldn't like you." A deep voice said.

They could talk?

The one that had picked her up, the orange one, shrugged. "I think she's just shocked."

She normally would have said something along the lines of 'I'm right here, I can hear you!' but she was too freaked out.

"No, no, no, no, no!" She protested and banged her fist on the robot's fingers. With every strike of her fist there was a metallic clang, like banging two pots together.

Sortie stopped banging and looked at her hand only to recoil at the sight. Her hand and the rest of her arm for that matter was a machine. She could hear the metal and gears brushing against each other as she moved. How was this possible? What was going on? What had happened to her? She put her face in her hands and heard another metal clang. She felt over her face and found both metal and flesh. The metal started at her jaw on the left side of her face and extended up to her eye and around her skull. It ran down the right side of her neck and down her chest. It looked like about half of her was robotic. She could feel the metal under her skin and replacing a lot of organs. She could have gotten away with not wearing any clothes if it wasn't for the fact that half of her stomach was exposed. The flesh on her face flushed red then quickly became white. She was going to be sick. Could she get sick anymore? She was a cyborg in the hand of a giant robot.

"Is she malfunctioning?" The orange one asked.

Sortie started to hyperventilate. What was she supposed to do? Why did the robot do this to her? What was she supposed to do about Allie and Yale? Were the robots going to kill her? Were they aliens or some government experiment? WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE GOING TO DO?

"I don't think humans are supposed to do that." The orange one said.

She rested her forehead on the robot's finger, still in a full on panic attack. She started to shake and was getting tunnel vision in her normal eye.

"What's going on? What am I supposed to do?" She muttered to herself.

Sortie just wanted to wake up from this sci-fi nightmare that she was trapped in.

"Hey, are you ok?" The robot asked.

"Am I ok? Am I OK?" Sortie snapped. "I just woke up in the middle of the woods with two giant robots as a cyborg! How do you think I'm doing?"

"Geez, take it easy." He said.

"Don't tell me to take it easy! What the hell is going on?" She shouted. "And put me down!"

"How do I know you won't run off if I let you down?" He asked.

"Where the hell would I go?" She demanded. "The first person to see me would call the military!"

"Put her down, Sideswipe. I don't think she's going anywhere." The other robot said.

The orange one set her on the ground.

"Now what the hell is going on?" She asked. "Are you two aliens and why did you do this to me?"

"Sit down; this could take a while to explain." The green and silver one said.

Sortie sat down on the layer of dead leaves, rubbing her metal legs.

"You don't remember what happened, do you?" The one apparently called Sideswipe asked.

"No." She replied.

"I was that orange Lamborghini that you tried to stop the male from stealing. I followed you after he started to chase you. I felt pretty bad because it was kind of my fault that you got hit so I asked Ratchet to see if he could fix you, and this is all he could do." He explained.

Sortie only nodded. So the Lamborghini was a transforming robot who had a friend with the ability to turn humans into cyborgs.

"So where exactly are you from?" She asked, a little less scared now that she knew they had saved her life.

"We are from a planet called Cybertron. It is inhabited with others like us. However, our planet is engulfed in a massive war between the autobots and the decepticons." Ratchet said.

Sortie didn't like the sound of the Decepticons too much.

"So which side are you two on?" She asked.

"We're autobots." Sideswipe said.

"If your planet is in a gigantic war, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be helping out?"

"Well you see the decepticons started the war over an object called the allspark. It is the source of life on our planet and for Primus knows what reason they want it. So, in order to protect itself, the allspark fled cybertron. We managed to track it to this planet but we can't figure out where it is exactly." Ratchet said.

"No thanks to Bumblebee." Sideswipe grumbled.

"Who?"

"Bumblebee is a youngling who the allspark implanted it's coordinates in as it was escaping. He is here with us." Ratchet said.

"There are more of you?"

"Yeah, it's the two of us, Bumblebee, Arcee, and Optimus Prime. I guess you'll get to meet them soon."

"Oh goodie." She said, "Why can't you find the allspark thing? If you tracked it this far shouldn't you be able to find its exact location?"

"We thought we could. But the coordinates are in Cybertronian and are giving us about twenty different locations on earth. And no one can figure out how to translate them into earthling."

"I could see if I could work them out, I'm not too bad with numbers." Sortie offered. "I guess I owe it to you guys in some twisted way for saving my life."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's not like I can do much of anything else now."

The three stood in an awkward silence, not quite knowing what to make of each other. Sortie felt like she was having an out of body experience. She slowly clenched her hand into a fist, taking in all of the movements of gears and metal. What was she going to do? How was she going to do for the rest of her life? She wasn't going to be able to anything without getting caught by the government and dissected.

"We should probably find the others." Ratchet said to Sideswipe.

Sortie felt her stomach, or at least what felt like her stomach, drop. What if the other autobots didn't like her? Not that she really cared what they thought of her, but they could crush her in one step if they really wanted to. She shuddered, causing all of the metal in her body to clang together, sounding like hail on a tin roof.

"What was that?" Sideswipe asked.

"A shudder." Sortie replied in an obvious tone.

"Why did you do that?"

"Umm, cause I'm cold."

"Cold…" Sideswipe replied.

"I really have no idea how to explain that to you."

"That's ok."

Finally, someone who didn't force her to explain a concept that they didn't understand when it really didn't matter to them anyway.

"Alright." Ratchet announced. "The others are on their way. They said to wait here,"

Sortie swallowed, this was going to be interesting.


	4. Chapter 4

Sortie was pacing back and forth across the ground, waiting for the other autobots to show up. She was still trying to come up with a way to get in contact with Allie to explain to her that she was still alive. She could email her, but that would require going out in public, which wasn't an option right now. What if she got kicked out of Yale? No, they didn't kick people out for going missing. Did they? She rubbed her forehead, trying to stop thinking about things she couldn't fix. She needed to be worrying about the problems at hand, like the fact that she was a cyborg and there were giant robots on earth.

Sortie heard loud footsteps getting closer. She stopped walking and looked up. A yellow autobot that was shorter than Sideswipe and Ratchet walked into the clearing.

"Hey guys, what was so important that we had to stop looking for the allspark? It'd better be good because Optimus isn't very happy about it." He said, his voice sounded younger than Sideswipe's.

"This is a bit weird, so you can't freak out." Sideswipe said then pointed at Sortie.

"Holy Primus!" The yellow bot shouted and jumped back.

"What are you so worried about? I don't even come up to your knee." Sortie shot.

"I thought humans were fully organic. What's wrong with this one?" He asked.

"There is nothing wrong with me!" Sortie protested.

"Bumblebee, relax. She was almost killed in a car accident and the only way to fix her was to use some cybertronian parts." Ratchet explained.

"Not to be mean or anything but why did you bother to save her?" He asked.

"Cause she saved Sideswipe from getting stolen." Ratchet said, looking at Sideswipe.

"You got stolen?" Bumblebee asked, trying to choke back laughter.

"No I did not!" Sideswipe protested, "I almost did."

"Yeah, you would have, if I hadn't been there." Sortie said.

Sideswipe folded his arms and glared at Sortie. Sortie folded her arms and stuck out her tongue at him.

The yellow bot knelt down, "Hi, I'm Bumblebee." He said.

"I'm Sortie." She replied. So this was the autobot with the coordinates implanted in him.

"Most humans aren't techno-organic, right? It's just you." He asked.

"Yeah, as of a few hours ago." She replied, assuming a techno-organic was the autobot word for a cyborg.

"Cool. I've never talked to a human before. What's earth like?" He asked.

"Um, a lot of things?" Sortie replied, not knowing how to answer that question.

"Well, what kind of stuff do you do?"

"I'm studying the human brain."

"So what's the big deal?" A female voice boomed across the clearing.

"Arcee." Bumblebee stood up.

"What is so important that we had to stop looking for the allspark?" She demanded.

This was the first female autobot that she had seen. Assuming that the autobots had genders. Her voice sounded female and she stood like a girl.

"Sideswipe almost got stolen, she saved him then got hit by a car, and Ratchet saved her." Bumblebee spurted out.

"You almost got stolen?" Arcee asked.

"Why is that the biggest concern here that I almost got stolen? There is a fragging techno-organic here who said she can help us find the allspark." Sideswipe said in utter frustration.

"Really?" Arcee asked.

"She said she studies human's brains." Bumblebee interjected.

"Oh, so she's smart, I take it. It'll be a nice change from dealing with you two idiots." She jeered.

"Hey!" Bumblebee protested.

Instead of kneeling down like Bumblebee had, Arcee remained standing. "I'm Arcee, I specialize in weapons." She said.

"I'm Sortie, I specialize in brains." She replied.

"Nice." Arcee nodded.

"I hope that you have a good reason to stop our search, Sideswipe." A deep voice announced.

The other autobots stood up and faced the new autobot. He was a lot taller than the others.

"Before anyone can say anything, I met someone who said she can help us find the allspark." Sideswipe quickly said.

"You talked to a human?" Optimus demanded.

"Not exactly. She helped me out of a tough situation and then she got hit by a car. I felt obliged to help her, so I brought her to Ratchet to see what he could do." Sideswipe explained.

Optimus looked down at Sortie. She started to take a step back, but changed her mind and stood her ground.

_ He's not so scary._ She thought. _Yeah, he's just a 32 foot tall, transforming robot from another planet. Probably loaded to the teeth with super advanced weapons, but definitely not scary. Cutting open someone's head to operate on their brain is much scarier. Definitely not scary. _

"What is your name, earthling?" He asked

"Sortie. Sortie Mackenna." She said, swallowing.

"Sortie, I'm sorry that you have become wrapped up with us. We tried to keep you humans out of our conflict, but we are too obvious to stay hidden for long." He explained.

"No, its-it's fine." She stammered. "I mean if it's a conflict that could destroy my planet, then I'm glad to help."

"I take it they explained our situation." He said.

"Yes." She replied.

"Sideswipe said that you might be able to convert the coordinates Bumblebee has into earthling so we can find the allspark." Optimus said.

"No promises, but I'm not too bad with numbers so I thought I'd take a crack at it." Sortie shrugged.

"We would all appreciate it if you would try." Optimus said. "Bumblebee, can you give her the coordinates?"

Bumblebee stood up, walked over to her, opened a compartment on his forearm and handed her a small chip.

"Um, what do I do with it?" She asked.

"Take the blue cord and connect it with the green one on the underside of your forearm. The coordinates should appear in your optic." Ratchet explained.

Sortie followed his instructions and a bunch of strange symbols appeared in her optic. At first they didn't make sense, but when she closed her eye she could read them like they were earth numbers.

_ That is really weird, but kind of cool._

She took a deep breath and prepared to do the hardest math problem of her life.

The sky was completely dark and the moon was up by the time she finished converting the numbers. She stretched her arms and sat up straight, she was pretty stiff from sitting hunched over for so long.

"So, I think I figured out where the allspark is." She announced.

"Really?" Bumblebee asked.

"Yeah, but if my geography is right, and I think it is, it's in Los Angeles, California." She said.

"Where?" Arcee asked.

"That's on the west coast of the US." Sortie said.

"How far away is that." Bumblebee asked.

"Two thousand eight hundred and eighty miles." She sighed.

"Ugh, that's a long way." Sideswipe grumbled.

"We're going to have to go there anyway, so you better well get over it." Ratchet said.

The autobots stood up. Sortie remained sitting.

"Alright then, are you coming Sortie?" Sideswipe asked.

"Am I coming?" She asked.

"Yeah, we can't just leave you here by yourself. And it's kinda my fault that you can't go anywhere. I mean, if you want to." He offered.

Sortie looked around at the other autobots, and none of them seemed to be against it. But she was torn between the autobots who she had just met and needed her help to save the earth and Yale. She had wanted to be a neuroscientist since the tenth grade and she was only two years away from getting a PhD, could she really leave now? And what about Allie? She was her best friend; she couldn't just leave without any kind of explanation. Knowing Allie, she was probably going crazy with worry right now.

"Is there any way that I can get in contact with a friend first? Just so I can tell her that I'm not dead." She asked.

"You could email her." Bumblebee suggested.

"What?" Ratchet asked.

"It's this thing that humans can do using the internet to send messages to each other." He replied.

"Wait, how do you know what the internet is? And better yet, how come you know how to speak English? There is no way that there is another planet with one of the same languages as earth." Sortie asked.

"We linked up with your internet and downloaded a few of the most common languages on earth so we could communicate with humans if we absolutely had to." Arcee explained.

"Oh, that makes sense, I think." Sortie said.

"Alright, we'll have enough time to discuss this on the way to California, let her email her friend." Ratchet interrupted.

"Okay, okay." Bumblebee said, "What's your email address?"

After about ten minutes of telling Bumblebee what to type, Sortie had told Allie that she was fine and with some 'friends'. She didn't know how long it would be until she could come back, but not to worry because she hadn't been kidnapped and it wasn't anything illegal. She also said to not tell anyone that she had gotten the email.

"Ugh, this isn't going to help. She's just going to call the FBI anyway. What am I kidding, she probably already has." Sortie groaned.

"It sounds like your friend worries a lot." Sideswipe said.

"A lot doesn't begin to describe it." She replied.

"We should start driving to California then." Optimus said.

Sortie found the remains of her clothes by the base of an oak tree and scooped them up. The bottoms of her jeans had been ripped off and were about the same length as Bermuda shorts, but they were still wearable. She slid them on a snapped the button shut; they felt odd over the metal. Her shirt was in a lot worse condition however. She ripped off the already torn sleeves and ripped off the tattered parts of the collar. She slid it on over her head and felt a little bit better. There may have been a hole across the side, but she didn't feel as awkward as she had before.

When she turned around she was confronted with an assortment of cars. There was the orange Lamborghini, which was obviously Sideswipe. The silver Hummer HX was probably Ratchet. Bumblebee had been the only yellow one so he must have been the Mazda Kabura with black racing stripes. Optimus was the biggest of the autobots so he must have been the biggest vehicle, the blue Mack Titan with red flames. The only one left was the blue Jeep Rubicon with some pink detailing so that must have been Arcee.

"Wow." She muttered.

"Pretty cool, right?" Bumblebee turned his wheels back and forth.

"Yeah, but you guys couldn't have picked any more obvious cars to transform into, could you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, hardly anyone owns a Lamborghini and no one owns a Kabura because it's a concept car. They are really obvious cars to be driving around. And what if we have to fight some of these decepticons? That's going to cause some damage and attract the government's attention. So if a Lamborghini, a Kabura, a Hummer, a Rubicon, and a Titan are reported every time there is an attack, they are going to come after us. And then we won't be able to hide with such an odd collection of rare cars." She said.

"These aren't normal earthling vehicles?" Optimus asked.

"No. Maybe one car by itself, but all of you together is just as bad as attaching neon signs to yourselves that said transforming alien robot." She said.

"Oh well. Get in my horribly obvious disguise and let's go." Sideswipe popped open his passenger side door.

Sortie climbed in and buckled her seatbelt.

"What, you don't trust my driving abilities?" Sideswipe asked, his voice coming through the radio.

"It's just a habit. And what if one of the Decepticons attacks us and smashes your hood in. I'd rather not go through the windshield." She said.

"You know there aren't any Decepticons on earth yet, right?"

"No, I don't. How can you tell?"

"You have something called an energon scanner built into your processor. Yours won't be very strong because you've never used it before. But it picks up traces of energon that are given off by all Cybertronians. Everyone's energon trace is different so eventually you will be able to tell the difference between them."

"How does that prove that there isn't any on earth?"

"Because Ratchet and Optimus aren't picking any up on their scanners, and they never miss anything."

Then Bumblebee's voice came on the radio, "Hey Sortie, why does your voice sound so different?"

"Bee! Get off my comm. Link!" Sideswipe protested.

"Hey, just because Sortie is riding with you doesn't mean you are the only one who gets to talk to her."

"It's called an accent, Bumblebee. I have what's called a Brooklyn accent." She said before Sideswipe could protest more.

"How did you get it?"

"Well I was raised with it. My parents and my brothers all talk like I do so I just started talking like them too. It's a learned habit."

"Why do people from Brooklyn talk like that but people from other places have different accents?"

_Oh boy, I have no idea how to answer that. _"Um, I think it has something to do with the way people changed previous accents over a long period of time. I'm not really sure, that was never something that I learned."

"That sounds confusing."

"There are a lot of confusing things about earth."

Suddenly a loud series of electronic warbles, clicks and screeches came on the radio.

"Damn, what is that?" Sortie asked, covering her ears,

"Um, remember how I told you that there aren't any Decepticons on earth?" Sideswipe asked.

Then a huge Cybertronian crashed in front of them, followed by several other, smaller ones.

"We we're wrong."

"Prime!" The biggest Decepticon roared aiming a cannon that was attached to his wrist at the Mack Titan.

What had Sortie gotten herself into?


	5. Chapter 5

"Get out!" Sideswipe shouted.

As soon as Sortie scrambled out of the car, Sideswipe started transforming. Optimus was already fighting the biggest of the Decepticons and Arcee and Ratchet were blasting the others. Bumblebee was transformed as well, but trying to stay out of the fight. She thought it would be a good idea to team up with another less experienced bot for her first fight. A blast of blue energy exploded next to her and she shot across the clearing.

"It's Megatron." Bumblebee muttered.

'Who?" Sortie asked.

"He's the leader of the Decepticons."

_Damn, this allspark thing must be pretty important if the leader of the Decepticons came all the way to earth for it._

Sortie quickly scanned the Decepticons and counted seven of them. Three of them were almost as big as or bigger than Optimus. Three others were more of the size of Arcee or Sideswipe and the seventh was about Bumblebee's size.

"Why are we just sitting here?" She asked.

"Optimus told me to stay out of the fights as much as I can, so the cons can't get a hold of the coordinates." He replied.

"Well, it looks like they could use all the help they can get." Sortie said as Ratchet got knocked to the ground by the heaviest set Decepticon.

"What can we do? No offence, but you're way too small and I'm not nearly a good enough fighter to do any damage." Bumblebee pointed out.

A blue blast exploded near the tree they were hiding behind.

"Bumblebee, you have a cannon right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Good. Run in there and just shoot at the Decepticons and keep moving. You'll create enough of a distraction for the others to do some serious damage."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm still working that out."

Bumblebee stood up and armed his cannon. It looked like he took a deep breath before he ran into the fight. Sortie climbed up a tree to the point where she was well over the Cybertronian's heads. Sideswipe slammed a Decepticon into the tree making it shake violently, almost throwing her off. She regained her balance and dug her metal fingers into the trunk. What was she going to do? Bumblebee was right; she was way too small to fight. But she never let something like that stop her before. She scanned the clearing to see how the autobots were doing. Sideswipe seemed to be the only one who was doing well at all. But Optimus seemed to be having the most problems, even if he looked like a good fighter.

He was fighting both Megatron and the one-optic con and it looked like he was getting his gears beaten out of him. Sortie climbed around to a tree that was behind Megatron, almost getting hit by another blue blast. She couldn't just launch herself out of the tree at Megatron's head and expect to not get killed without some kind of weapon.

_Oh come on, I have to have some kind of weapon in here somewhere._

The most logical place to put a weapon was in the arms, so she focused there first. Her forearm disassembled and reassembled as cannon.

"Woah!"

She looked back down at the fight, "I really hope I can figure out how to shoot this in the next three seconds." She took a deep breath and jumped out of the tree.

Time seemed to slow down as she fell through the air. She crashed into Megatron's head and caught her footing on his shoulder. She pressed her cannon against the side of his head and fired. The blue energy blasted him in the face, sending him stumbling back. Sideswipe tripped him, and Sortie held on the whole way down. She was disoriented for a second but pushed herself up anyway.

"Insolent human." He growled, as he stood back up.

"Stupid robot." Sortie shot back, almost immediately regretting insulting a gigantic war machine.

Megatron aimed his cannon at her and she could see the blue energy gathering in its center. She ducked and rolled under it and shot him in the foot. Before she could get too far away, he spun around and kicked her across the clearing. She looked up in time to see Megatron running towards her and Sideswipe roll over her and scoop her up. He transformed into a car and she somehow wound up in the back seat. Sideswipe tore through the trees and sped onto the road.

"What about the others?" Sortie asked.

"We split up. We are going to try to ditch the cons and meet up when we can." Sideswipe replied.

"Is Bumblebee ok?" She asked, she was worried that the young bot had gotten hurt in the fight because she told him to jump in.

"He's fine and with Optimus, so he should be safe."

"Ok good." Sortie sighed, leaning back in the seat.

She could see the speedometer hovering at around 155 mph and wondered how the others were going to manage to get away as quickly. Then again, they didn't transform into 300,000 dollar cars.

"I can't believe you shot Megatron in the face." Sideswipe said.

"Yeah, well, I had to do something." She shrugged.

"What's the earth phrase? 'That took some guts' I think. I wouldn't even do that."

"Well, I had no idea who he was so he didn't seem that scary."

"Oh please, he is at least thirty feet taller than you. He is scary whether you knew him before or not. And then you called him a stupid robot. I can't believe you called him a stupid robot." He said.

"I am known for my snark." She replied.

"Seriously, no one insults Megatron and lives. You have to tell me how you did it."

"It's a secret."

"Oh."

"Honestly, it's a habit. I insult people who make me mad."

"I'll try to not make you mad then."

Sortie nodded, and then wondered if Sideswipe could see her.

"Hey, can you see me? Or can you only hear me?" She asked.

"I can see you."

"From where?"

"The radio."

She leaned forward and waved at the radio. He made the clock speed up until it was back at its original time of two seventeen in the morning

"Wow it's early." She muttered.

"How long can humans go without recharging?"

"Humans don't recharge, they sleep. And it all depends on the person; I once went six days without sleeping. But for the most part we need to sleep for about nine hours a day."

"You went six days without sleep? I don't know much about humans, but that doesn't sound like a good idea."

"It wasn't. How often do you guys have to recharge?"

"For about ten hours every two earth days."

"Hmm, I wonder if I'll be able to go longer without sleeping now because I'm part autobot."

"Maybe."

They drove in silence for another hour, quickly leaving Connecticut. Sortie turned around and looked out the back window.

_Goodbye Yale. Goodbye Allie. _

She rested her chin on the back of the leather seat and watched the scenery race by. Her optic started to go fuzzy and she felt the pinch behind her eye like she was going to cry. No, no, no, no, NO. She would not cry. She took a deep, shaky breath and tried to calm herself down.

"Taking out my freak tonight, I wanna show, all the dirt, I got running through my mind." The radio blasted in an annoying, auto tuned, female voice.

"What's wrong with her voice? That doesn't sound right." Sideswipe asked.

"More like what's wrong with her? Can you change the station?" Sortie plugged her ears.

Then some really high pitched Swedish voice came on the radio. It quickly changed to Mexican, then Polka, then more bad pop.

"Ugh, what's wrong with you're planet? This might as well be torture." Sideswipe kept scrolling through the radio stations.

"Not all music is bad. Try the one hundreds." She suggested.

He carefully went through the stations until he reached 106.5.

"It's so unreal, I didn't look out below. Watch the time go right out the window. Trying to hold on but didn't even know. Wasted it all to watch you go." A guy rapped.

"This is pretty good." Sideswipe commented.

"Yeah, Linkin Park is a good band." Sortie sighed.

This was one of Allie's favorite songs. They used to sing it together all the time.

"Party rock is in the house tonight. Everybody just have a good time." The song suddenly changed.

Sideswipe started moving his windshield wipers to the beat of the song. Sortie smiled slightly.

"You ok?" He asked.

"I guess." She shrugged.

"Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase, Hakuna Matata, ain't no passing craze, it means no worries for the rest of your days. It's our problem free, philosophy, Hakuna Matata." The radio changed again.

Sortie's smile widened. Sideswipe rocked back and forth, making her slide across the seat.

"I'm picking up an energon signal. Let's see if I can catch her." Sideswipe said.

His speed picked up and shot down the empty road. Soon, they could see the tail lights of a car ahead of them.

"Try your scanner again. See if you can pick out anything special about the energon reading." He suggested.

She focused on the blank screen on the back of her left palm.

_ Ok, so it's blue blip._

She focused harder and it slowly changed into cybertronian writing. The letters were much harder to translate than numbers.

"Sideswipe, I know you're back there." Arcee's voice announced over the radio.

"Arcee! I'm trying to teach her how to use her scanner. You can't give yourself away." Sideswipe said.

"I think she is smart enough to figure it out on her own. What do you think, Sortie?"

"I think I can manage."

"Do you know where the others are?" Sideswipe asked, changing the subject.

"Ratchet is with Optimus and Bumblebee and they are going to meet us in a city called Philadelphia." She replied.

"I hope we get to knock some Decepticon heads on the way." Sideswipe said.

"You shouldn't. If they figure out where we are going, we are toast. Half of them are jets." Arcee retorted.

"Well they can't beat us there if they are a heap of scrap metal."

"Suppose that all seven of the cons attack us at once? Where does that fit in with your master plan? We'll be the pile of scrap metal in that scenario."

"I think we could take them. If Sortie would shoot Megatron in the face a few more times, we would have a huge advantage."

"And what would that be?"

"They would crumble without their 'mighty leader'."

"Unfortunately, Shockwave and Starscream can make up for the lack of intelligence in the rest of the cons. If you had to fight them both, you would get pummeled."

"I would not. The only bot who can beat me in a fight is Sunstreaker."

"Oh yeah? What about last week when I kicked your sorry afterburner?"

"You were pulling so many cheap shots it wasn't funny."

"The cons aren't exactly known for being fair fighters. I was trying to train you to fight one of them."

"I fought plenty of Decepticons way before I met you!"

"Apparently not enough."

Sideswipe started spewing out what Sortie assumed was a string of Cybertronian swear words. He had a very colorful vocabulary.


	6. Chapter 6

Sortie was lying on her back on Sideswipe's back seat. He had been arguing with Arcee for the past hour about stuff that had happened while they were on Cybertron. She couldn't understand half of what was going on mostly because they would start talking in Cybertronian at random parts during the conversation. She was starting to grasp at a few words but not enough to understand what they were talking about.

She sighed loudly, hoping that maybe they would stop. They continued to argue.

_I wonder if they are really good friends or they actually hate each other and were just forced to come on this mission together._

She rolled her wrist around, listening to the clicking noised that the gears made. It started to feel stiff, like she needed to pop it. She snapped it to the left, still stiff. She snapped it to the right and two sheets of metal folded out of her arm and attached together, forming a triangular blade.

"What just happened?" She shouted.

"What did you do?" Sideswipe started swerving around the road.

"Sides, watch out!" Arcee sped up to avoid getting hit.

"How do I get rid of it?" She tried to keep it as far away from her as she could to avoid accidentally slicing herself.

"How did you get it in the first place?" Sideswipe demanded.

"I don't know! It just kind of happened!"

"Well get rid of it! You're going to tear up my interior!"

"What do I do?"

"You tell me, it's your body!"

"I just got this body a few hours ago! Do you think I know what I'm doing?"

"Hey Ratchet, how can Sortie retract the blade in her left arm?" Arcee asked over the comm. Link.

After a moment of white noise Ratchet's voice came over the radio. "If she snaps her wrist to the left it should retract."

Sortie snapped her wrist to the left and the blade retracted.

"Thank you Ratchet." She sighed, letting her head nod back.

Two metal wings shot out of her shoulder blades, knocking her off the seat.

"Agh! What else am I equipped with, anti aircraft turrets?"

"No, just some high powered Cybertronian cannons." Ratchet replied.

"That's it. Pull over!" Sortie shouted.

"What? No, we have to get to Philadelphia." Sideswipe said.

"Do you want to get blown up from the inside?" She demanded.

"We kind of have Decepticons on our tail. We can't just stop now."

"Sides, let her have a minute." Arcee insisted.

"Did you not see Megatron back there? He wants you dead."

"Sideswipe!" Sortie roared, a cannon popping out of her right arm and the blade extending again.

Sideswipe slammed on the breaks and opened the back door and Sortie scrambled out. Her cannon was still charging up. She gripped it with her free hand to keep it aimed at the ground. It fired and the backlash made her arm shoot straight up into the air and stumble back a few feet.

"What else is stored in here, huh? Am I going to have to figure out my own body as I go along or can you guys tell me what weapon systems I have?" She asked, clearly frustrated.

"Alright, Sortie calm down—" Ratchet said.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" She interjected.

"You already know about your blade, cannon and wings. The blade is made of Cybertanium. There are a couple things that you need to be aware of when using your cannon. First, it has three modes. Each mode progressively uses more power and has more strength, but if you use too much power you'll run out and have to wait for it to recharge. Your wings have jet rockets on the ends and with practice you should be able to learn to fly. In your feet you have retractable wheels with smaller rockets, but you can use them without the rockets if you so choose. You also have two Cybertanium knives; one in the outside of your right thigh and the other is in the outside of your left shin." Ratchet explained.

"A lot of reassurance for the puny techno-organic, huh?" She asked, slightly calmed down.

"Cant be too careful." He replied.

"Are there going to be any weird repercussions from being a techno-organic, are there?"

"Not that I personally know of. Then again, I have never actually seen a techno-organic so I might not be the best bot to ask about that."

_Great. I'm definitely going to accidentally kill myself. _

"Can we keep going please? I would rather not get blown up by the Decepticon that you insulted." Sideswipe asked impatiently.

"Ok, ok. Don't blow a gasket or something." She retorted, climbing in the back seat.

"I don't blow gaskets." He mumbled.

"Yes you do." Arcee said.

"No I don't!" He fired back.

"Don't start arguing again!" Sortie interjected. "You're acting like an old married couple."

The two bots were silent for a minute before breaking into violent protest.

_At least they are mad at me and not at each other._

"Shut up!" Bumblebee shouted over the comm. Link. "I don't think I can listen to you two argue anymore."

The radio went silent.

"Finally." Ratchet sighed.

Sortie rested her head against the window as Sideswipe continued driving. She felt bad for getting so worked up. Sideswipe didn't have to save her, yet he did and she was here freaking out over not knowing what was going on with her body.

_Well that is kind of a big deal. Its not every day you get turned into a cyborg._

_ But I didn't have to have a panic attack about it._

_ Then what would you consider something worth freaking out about?_

_ Getting kicked out of Yale._

_ It's great to know that I have my priorities straight._

She sighed, she was arguing with herself again. She really needed to stop that. But it had brought up the question of why Sideswipe had decided to blow his cover then ask Ratchet to take the time out of their search to save her. She couldn't imagine the process of turning her into a techno-organic was easy, especially considering that the autobots had never had contact with humans before. Sideswipe had also risked getting into trouble with Optimus. Even though she didn't know him very well, he didn't seem like the kind of leader to take disobedience lightly. Sideswipe also didn't know how she would react to becoming a techno-organic. She could have completely freaked out for all he knew and run off and ratted them out. He took all of those risks based on no information about her.

Would she have taken an insane risk on the slim chance that it would save a complete stranger? Of course she would have in a surgery, which was her job. But in any other situation? Probably not. She didn't like dealing with people enough to risk everything on pulling a stunt like Sideswipe had. He was definitely brave, she would give him that. And a good fighter, even though she had only seen him beating up a Decepticon for a second.

What had she gotten herself into? She was traveling cross country with five giant robots. They already had a run in with their enemies, who outnumbered them by two. And the leader of their enemies already wanted her dead. It was only a matter of time before she started seeing the missing posters of herself. Her normal, human self, that is. She wondered for a second if her parents would miss her, but quickly dismissed the thought, not wanting to come to an answer.

Amidst her thinking, she drifted off into a light sleep. She would occasionally wake up when Sideswipe would drive over a speed bump, or when the sound of traffic got loud.

"Sortie." Sideswipe said. "Wake up."

"Huh? What is it?" She asked.

"I'm picking up Decepticon energon readings." He said.

"What? Where are we?"

"In Philadelphia, but we can't get to Optimus, Ratchet and Bee because the cons are sitting right in between us."

"Cant you call them on the comm. Link?"

"The Decepticons are picking up all of our transmissions, if we talk to them, they will hear it."

"Can't we just go around them?"

"We can't get too close to them or they will pick up our energon signatures." Arcee said. "But Sortie, you might be able to."

"Me?" She squeaked.

"Yeah, your energon signature is fairly weak so they probably won't notice it." She replied.

"Probably?"

"I highly doubt it."

"What about the humans? Won't they notice her?" Sideswipe asked.

"Oh yeah, you're right."

"I just need different clothes. If I can hide my techno parts no one will notice." She said.

"But don't you have to buy them? You would blow your cover." Sideswipe pointed out.

"I don't necessarily have to buy them."

Ten minutes later, they were parked in an alley behind a Sports Authority.

"Sortie, isn't stealing illegal on earth?" Arcee asked.

"Yes, but I place Earth's survival over stealing some clothes." Sortie replied.

"What if we get caught, do we have a plan for that?" Sideswipe asked.

"Jeez, you guys sure know how to worry. First, it's if I get caught, not you guys. Second, I won't get caught."

"How do you know how to break and enter?" Sideswipe asked.

"Uhh, I'd rather not say."

Sortie was disabling the cable that would set off an alarm if the door was opened. She quickly picked the lock, and then slowly opened the door. It was almost completely dark in the store. She crept around the racks of track shorts and socks to the winter clothes. There were sweatpants and sweatshirts stacked in a set of metal shelves. She grabbed a pair of black sweatpants and a light green sweatshirt and slid them on. They seemed to fit so she walked back out of the store. She shut the door behind her, locked it, and reconnected the wire.

"See I told you I wouldn't get caught." She said.

"Well we are. The Decepticreeps are headed right for us." Sideswipe said.

"Then you two should head back to the highway and start heading to Newark. I'll find Optimus and the others and tell them." She said.

"Ok, try to avoid the cons." Arcee said.

"Yeah, don't piss any more of them off." Sideswipe added.

"I told you, it just happens. I didn't try to make him mad."

"Ok, ok, you two. Let's get going before the cons catch us." Arcee said.

The two autobots took off down the street, weaving their way through traffic. Sortie took a deep breath and walked the other way. She could run into the Decepticons at any moment. By herself she didn't stand a chance. In an attempt to not completely freak out, she focused on her scanner. There were three red blips about twenty blocks away and five purple blips ten blocks away. She kept walking towards the red blips, ignoring the purple ones. A car honked its horn, making her jump.

_Just keep walking. You can make it._

The purple blips kept getting closer and closer. They looked like a pack of hungry lions surrounding a tiny gazelle. Then they were right next to her. She looked at the road and saw five black cars driving in a straight line on the other side of the road. She staggered to a halt, but the cars continued to drive. She exhaled deeply and started walking again. The red blips started moving towards her. As soon as the Titan, Hummer, and Kabura came into sight, she let out a huge sigh. Optimus slowed down as he got closer to her and she quickly climbed in.

"Where are Arcee and Sideswipe?" Optimus asked.

"They are headed for Newark. We agreed to meet back up there." She explained.

"Great, the two of them alone, without someone to break up the arguments." Ratchet said.

"They will be fine." Optimus assured him.

"Sure." Ratchet didn't sound too convinced.

It was a weird shift from a Lamborghini to a Titan. A Lamborghini sat really low and had small windows, where as the Titan towered over the other cars. Sortie sat on her hands and focused on the road in front of them. It didn't feel as laid back as it had with Sideswipe. Probably because Optimus was a lot more intimidating and serious as Sideswipe was.

_I wonder how much older he is than Sideswipe._

Then she wondered how long could Cybertronians live. It would make sense that they could live longer than humans because they were made of metal and wouldn't wear out as quickly. But as far as relative age went, Optimus and Ratchet seemed to be the oldest, but she couldn't pinpoint an exact age. Sideswipe and Arcee sounded like they were around her age and Bumblebee acted like a teenager.

"Hey, what is you guy's life expectancy?" She asked.

"In Earth terms, several thousand years." Ratchet said.

"Thousand?" She replied, that was a long time.

"How long do humans live for?" Bumblebee asked.

"It depends on the country and how healthy it is, but in America it's about seventy to eighty years." She answered.

"Wow, that's really short." Bumblebee muttered.

An hour later they were out of Philadelphia and headed for Newark. It was quiet except for the occasional question from Bumblebee.

Then Sideswipe's voice came over the radio. "When are you guys going to get to Newark? Arcee won't shut up." He complained.

"Hey, neither will you." Arcee argued.

"We should be there in another hour." Optimus replied.

"Can you two go that long without tearing each other apart?" Ratchet asked.

"I doubt it." Bumblebee scoffed.

Once the two of them started to argue again, Optimus shut off the comm. Link. "We should move faster, those two might actually rip each other to pieces." He said.


	7. Chapter 7

They met up with Sideswipe and Arcee in Newark; thankfully they hadn't torn each other limb from limb. Optimus decided that everyone needed to rest before they moved on so they found an old parking lot outside of town. Sortie didn't feel comfortable sleeping in Optimus, so she climbed in Sideswipe's back seat. None of the bots said anything as they began to power down which just added to Sortie's feeling of loneliness. She missed Allie and wished she could be back at Yale studying. It wasn't that she didn't like the Autobots or anything, she just felt very out of place with them.

It took her a good hour to get settled down and another hour to fall asleep.

Suddenly a loud alarm filled her ears. She shot up, fumbling to start up her cannon.

_Are the Decepticons attacking?_

"Rise and shine, rookies. You've got some early morning training to do." Ratchet said in a voice that was almost mocking.

"Oh no." Bumblebee groaned, still in car form.

"Get up Bee. There is no avoiding it." Arcee said.

"Alright, alright." He said, slowly transforming.

"You too, Sortie." Sideswipe said.

"What?" She asked, shocked.

"We cant just let you fight the cons without any training. You can train with Bumblebee." She replied.

"Oh boy." She said, climbing out of Sideswipe.

"Oh boy is right." Bumblebee said, "Early morning training sucks."

The sun was just starting to come over the horizon and the air was still cold. Sortie bounced on her toes, trying to stay warm.

"Bumblebee, you drive ten miles out that way with Arcee." Optimus said. "Sortie, Sideswipe is going to help you with your wheels."

"Wait, what are you and Ratchet going to be doing?" Bumblebee asked.

"We are going to try and pinpoint the Decepticons on the scanners." Optimus replied.

"Now stop stalling and go!" Ratchet pointed at the road.

Arcee sped out of the lot, prompting Bumblebee to start driving.

"Get your wheels out, we are going to race." Sideswipe said.

Sortie just stared at him. Race a Lamborghini? Was that his idea of a joke?

"You're serious?" She asked.

"Yes."

"You are insane."

"Just get your wheels out. I won't go that fast."

Sortie focused on her feet, trying to get the wheels out. Her feet started to transform into arches and wheels popped out. Then a pair of rockets shot out of her ankles and propelled her forward. She fought to stay standing but the rockets clearly wanted to keep going. She heard Sideswipe's tires screech behind her and he quickly passed her. He maneuvered in front of her and started to slow down.

"Grab my bumper." He said.

She shot forward and planted her hands on Sideswipe's trunk. She focused as hard as she could on the rockets and eventually they retracted. Sideswipe continued to drive, dragging Sortie along with him. He gradually started to speed up until they were going about seventy five miles an hour.

"Can we slow down?" She shouted over the comm. Link.

"No, you need practice moving fast." He replied.

"Do we have to start this fast?" She asked.

"Are you kidding me, this isn't fast. Hopefully I can get you up to 150 miles per hour in a few weeks."

"Are _you _kidding me? 150 miles an hour? That's insanity!" She cried.

"Not for someone your size. I've seen bots that are as small as you clear 300 after a lot of training."

"You are crazy!" She shouted as loud as she could into the comm. Link.

Sideswipe shot forward and started speeding down the road at around 140 miles an hour.

"Cut it out!" Sortie yelled.

"Then let go." He replied.

Sortie let go of his spoiler and continued to glide down the road.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it." He sighed.

She knew that he was baiting her, but there was no way that she would look weak. She didn't want to try the rockets again, so she started pushing herself forward like she was roller-skating. She had never been particularly athletic so she was worried that she would tire out too quickly to get moving fast. But her new mechanical parts helped her to maintain a decent speed.

"There we go. I knew the girl who picked fights with guys wouldn't give up that easily." Sideswipe said.

It was terrifying to be moving so fast without anything around her. She thought that since she rode a motorcycle, the wind whipping against her skin wouldn't bother her, but it did. She felt like she was going to trip and tear up the other side of her face. She looked through Sideswipe's window and saw the odometer. It read 25 miles an hour.

_Only 275 more to go_

Eventually she started to get tired. She was slowing down. Once Sideswipe passed her she grabbed his spoiler.

"Nice job that was about seven miles." He said.

"Seven?" She wheezed. "I've never even run that far."

"Well now you've got wheels. And running wont help you escape decepticons anyway." He said.

"Are we going back?" She asked.

"Yeah, Arcee still has to train you with your cannons."

"Ugh." Sortie groaned.

"Oh you'll be fine."

Sideswipe dragged her all the way back to the parking lot while she tried to catch her breath.

_Why didn't I ever do any sports? Oh yeah, those two PhDs are kind of time consuming. _

Now she was thinking about it again. She was so close to graduating. She rested her head on his spoiler; why couldn't this happen after she graduated? Because life wasn't fair.

_Suck it up, Sortie. You'll be fine._

She stood up straight. Then, Sideswipe suddenly veered off the road and into the woods. She went flying into the air when he drove over a bump.

"What the hell was that?" She demanded, standing up.

"Shhh! I picked up a Decepticon on my long range scanner. It's going to land right in the middle of the road." He said.

Sortie ducked behind a tree.

"What is it doing here? Did Megatron call it?" She asked.

"I don't know, but we have to kill it." He stated.

"Oh joy." She muttered.

"What? It'll be good practice for you. Besides, it's not that big." He replied.

They watched as a flaming heap of metal crashed onto the road and skidded into the woods on the other side. The Decepticon slowly stood up and started to make the weird warbles and clicks that she had heard other cybertronians make. It must have been their native language. She focused as hard as she could until she started to pick up a few words.

"Come…landed…assist…" Was all she could hear it say.

"Slag it, its Dead End. He's trying to contact the other cons. We need to take him out now." Sideswipe said.

"How exactly are we going to do that?" She asked.

"You go that way," he pointed in the opposite direction of Dead End. "Then when you are about 60 yards away, jump out and shoot him. Then I'll jump out from behind him and put him offline." He explained.

"Ok." Sortie nodded.

She started running through the trees, keeping the road in sight. She glanced back to check her distance and saw that Sideswipe was gone. Then she smacked into something metal. Her first thought was that it was another decepticon and she was about to get squished. She looked up and found Bumblebee standing in front of her.

"Good grief, it's just you." She sighed a huge breath of relief.

"What's going on? Did you loose Sideswipe too?" He asked.

"What? No. Wait, I thought you were driving with Arcee."

"Yeah, I was. Until she led me down some weird road then abandoned me."

"Hang on a second." She replied, suddenly remembering Dead End.

She started to charge her cannon as she ran to the road. By the time she had aimed at the Decepticon that was still trying to contact Megatron, she had a blast that would make it all the way to him. She fired her cannon, which knocked her over. Dead End whipped around, yelling and swearing in cybertronian. He started charging at her. Sideswipe jumped out behind him, but Dead End whipped around and shot him with a green blast then transformed into what Sortie guessed was a cybertronian car. Sideswipe was frozen stiff on the ground. She kicked the air with both of her feet, making the wheels pop out.

"Get back here, human!" Dead End shouted.

Damn, he found the internet.

Sortie took off skating as fast as she could without tripping. There was the screeching sound of rubber on asphalt as Bumblebee sped onto the road. He slammed into Dead End, knocking him into the grass. He recovered quickly and kept chasing them. A blast of blue energy flew right in between Sortie and Bumblebee and the next one narrowly missed Bumblebee's side view mirror. Sortie swerved across the road and grabbed Bumblebee's spoiler, turned around, and shot at Dead End. Her aim was far from perfect and she missed half of time. She shot the ground in front of Dead End and asphalt and blue energy flew straight up. Dead End charged right through it and transformed and jumped on Bumblebee. He swerved off the road and transformed, dragging Sortie with him. She went flying into a tree and the wind was knocked out of her. She struggled to get up and saw Bumblebee pinned to the ground by Dead End. He was punching him repeatedly so Sortie shot the decepticon in the shoulder.

Dead End lunged for her; Sideswipe tackled him and stabbed him straight through the blue glowing circle on his chest. Dead End sputtered for a minute before collapsing, dead. Or offline, as Sideswipe had put it. A blue fluid was leaking out of the body.

"What is that stuff?" She asked. She had a hunch that it was probably Cybertronian blood, but wanted to make sure.

"It's called Energon. It's like human blood." Sideswipe said.

"That's what I thought."

"What are we going to do with him? We can't just leave it here for a human to discover." Bumblebee said.

"I guess we'll have to drag it back to Ratchet and Optimus and see if they know."

"Gross."

Sideswipe grabbed his arms and Bumblebee grabbed his legs and they carried him off into the woods. Sortie followed close behind, kicking the air as she tried to get the wheels to retract. She had to jog to keep up with their enormous strides, which she counted as more exercise.

It was about noon when they got back to the parking lot. They had been gone for five hours. Ratchet looked like he was ready to lecture them on following orders, but stopped once he saw the dead con.

Bumblebee dropped his legs immediately upon stepping onto the pavement.

"I never want to do that again." He stated.

Sortie sat down, panting. Now that she finally got to stop running, she noticed that her left leg was scraped up pretty badly and that the hip and knee joints hurt. Red blood was oozing out of her human skin and the blue Energon was leaking out of her cybertronian parts. Apparently she had both running in her veins and whatever the autobot version of veins was.

_Wait, that's not good._

"Well Bee, you are going to have to get over it." Sideswipe said.

"I never wanted to do this stuff in the first place." He mumbled.

"What, save Cybertron from the Decepticons. You'd rather go exploring or adventuring or whatever you call it while they destroy the planet." Sideswipe shot.

"It's not like I asked the allspark to implant its coordinates in my head." Bumblebee fired back.

"That doesn't mean you can't stop complaining about everything!"

Bumblebee went silent.

"Was that really necessary, Sideswipe?" Ratchet asked. "He is still a youngling."

"Will you guys stop treating me like I'm completely hopeless?" Bumblebee shouted then transformed and drove off.

"Thank you, Sideswipe." Ratchet said.

"I didn't sign up to guard younglings." Sideswipe muttered.

To Sortie it looked like Sideswipe was mad because he got hit with that paralyzing blast, because of which, Bumblebee almost got beaten to a pulp. Then he just lashed out at Bumblebee when he complained. And there was probably some previous deal about the other bots being super protective of Bumblebee and he just got tired of it. For being robots, they sure had a lot of human emotions.

"We need to go after Bumblebee. It's not safe for any of us to be alone with the Decepticons still around." Optimus said.

"No, we should let him blow off some steam. Besides, we can watch him on the scanners." Ratchet said.

Optimus nodded in agreement then turned to Sideswipe.

"Sideswipe, I know this is frustrating for you. But you at least need to try to get along with Bumblebee."

"Sortie, come here. I need to fix your wounds before they rust." Ratchet said.

Sortie hobbled over to the medic, and out of earshot of Optimus, who was still talking to Sideswipe.

"As you can tell, this isn't Sideswipe's best field." He said, waving some kind of scanner over her.

"Yeah, I noticed." She replied.

"He was kind of a lone wolf back on Cybertron, a lot like Arcee." He explained and pulled out a blocky key shaped object.

"That would explain why they don't get along." She suddenly understood why the two bots were always ready to tear each limb from limb.

"Let me see your wrist." He said.

She held up her arm and he held the key over it for a second. The tip of it shifted into a small key shaped nub. He stuck it into her arm and turned it 90 degrees to the right, like he was starting a car. The wounds on the robotic part of her leg closed up.

"Woah, that's amazing. How does it work?" Sortie asked.

"It was charged by the allspark, which gives life to all cybertronians. This small amount of power from it is able to heal wounds. At least, cybertronian ones." Ratchet explained.

"That's alright, I can handle the other wounds."

Sortie's human skin was still scraped up, and she had no way of healing it. She tore off the shredded remains of the bottom of her sweatpants; she could use it to wrap the wound. Now if she could just find some herbs of some kind.

Half an hour later, Sortie had wrapped up her leg after putting a poultice of medicinal plants that she had found on the wound. Bumblebee was still gone, but apparently Optimus was tracking him on his scanner. They heard a car driving up the road to the abandoned parking lot and everyone sprang up. The autobots transformed into their alternate modes and Sortie dove behind Ratchet. They all relaxed when they saw that it was Arcee.

"I just saw the Stunticons." She blurted as soon as she transformed.

"The other ones are here too?" Ratchet asked.

"What do you mean the other ones?" Sortie asked.

"Well, we don't have to worry about them combining into Menasor at least." Sideswipe said.

"What do you mean?" Arcee asked.

"We just killed Dead End a few hours ago." He replied.

"The universe is better off without that depressing little glitch." Acree commented.

"What are you all talking about?" Sortie asked in a louder voice.

"Dead End was one of the Stunticons who could combine into Menasor, who is a pain in the aft to fight." Sideswipe explained.

"And now that he is dead, they can't become Menasor." Arcee added.

"Wait, why didn't we pick them up on the scanners?" Sortie asked.

All of the autobots stopped and exchanged a worried glance.

"That's a good question, why didn't we?" Ratchet asked, looking at his scanner.

"I think they have figured out how to disguise their energon signals." Optimus said.

"How is that possible?" Arcee asked.

"I'm not sure, but we need to find them before they can tell the other decepticons how to do it." Optimus said. "Arcee, where are they?"

"They should be in a straight line east." She said.

"Isn't that the way Bumblebee went?"


	8. Chapter 8

_**Valkyrie: **Sorry for being a negligent writer. I have been busy… and lazy. I'm sorry, it's a problem. Probably one I should get addressed. Anyway, I now have a laptop that does not move at a glacial pace so I should be able to update more often. On to Chapter 8!_

"We have to go after him."

"Not all of us at once. Arcee, take Sortie and head through the woods. Try to make an arc around them. The three of us will head straight there." Optimus said, before transforming. "Let's roll out."

The three mechs sped out of the parking lot while Sortie climbed into Arcee's driver seat. The autobot drove straight off of the concrete and into the woods, thankfully her jeep form made it easy to drive over the bumpy ground.

"So just to make sure I have everything straight, there are five of these Stunticon guys and they can combine to form Menasor?" Sortie asked.

"Yes, but now that Dead End is offline they shouldn't be able to form Menasor." Arcee explained.

Sortie nodded, she was still trying to wrap her head around the idea of five separate beings combining to form one. It reminded her of the Megazord from Power Rangers, but was undoubtedly more deadly. Then she realized that Bumblebee could be dealing with four of them by himself.

"I hope Bumblebee is okay." She said.

"I do too. The kid has enough stress on him already. And we really don't need the Decepticons getting the allspark's coordinates." Arcee added.

"They can take the coordinates from him?" Sortie asked.

"Probably. And I doubt it would be a pleasant process." Arcee replied.

They continued driving in silence for another few minutes. Sortie kept monitoring her scanner, trying to pick up on the Stunticons. It still wasn't easy and she didn't pick up on anything.

"Hey, are you getting anything on your scanner?" Sortie asked.

"No, are you?"

"I've got nothing; I was hoping that you would have something."

"This is strange. Normally I would at least be able to get a general idea of where they are. But I have absolutely nothing, I feel sort of blind."

"You don't think that they figured out how to block the scanners somehow?"

"Primus I hope not."

Suddenly a Decepticon smashed into Arcee's right side, sending her into a barrel roll. In mid rotation, Arcee opened the driver side door and Sortie was thrown out. The Autobot quickly transformed and grabbed the Decepticon's arms. Sortie pushed herself off of the ground and tried to figure out what was going on. It looked like Bumblebee punched the Decepticon into Arcee and was now being pummeled by the other three Stunticons. The other three autobots weren't anywhere in site so Sortie powered up her cannon, extended her blade, and popped her wheels out. She charged at the smallest stunticon and stabbed it in the leg. It turned to face her, but looked a little shocked when he saw how small she was.

It armed its cannon and started to fire at her. She started to lead it away from Bumblebee, leaving him with two to fight. Sortie couldn't skate backwards, she didn't have that much coordination, and so she would skate ahead then turn around and fire at the Stunticon. It was clearly becoming frustrated with her and started to fire more frequently. Suddenly a huge spear stabbed into the ground a few inches to her left. She swore loudly and took off at a full on sprint. Unfortunately the Stunticon transformed into a Cybertronian car and started to chase her.

She couldn't outrun the thing, so she decided to outmaneuver it. She rocketed between two trees that she could just barely fit through. The decepticon swerved around them and kept driving. Then she saw the road about a hundred yards ahead of her and took off for it, she could move faster on concrete. But so could the Stunticon. It shot forward to ram her so she instinctively jumped. To her surprise, she landed on the hood of the Decepticon. It started to swerve around the road, trying to throw her off so she stabbed her blade into its hood. It let out a screech and slammed on the breaks. Sortie shot forward but stayed on the car. Then it started driving straight towards a tree. She tried to pry her blade out of the metal, but to no avail.

Suddenly the 'Con jerked to a stop again. But this time Optimus stopped it. He lifted the Stunticon off of the ground and held it there just long enough for Sortie to retract her blade and jump off. Sideswipe was pulling the biggest Stunticon off of Bumblebee, who was on the ground. She skated over to him, hoping to help in some way.

"Bumblebee, you ok?" She asked.

"Sorta." He replied, grimacing in pain.

"Well let's get you out of here." She said. "Can you move?"

"Yeah."

Bumblebee stood up slowly, becoming a much bigger target. He attracted the attention of one of the 'Cons, who shot a blast of energy at him. Sortie countered it by shooting her own blast. The two blasts cancelled each other out and created an explosion in mid air. Sortie continued to cover Bumblebee as he limped away from the fight. They were getting closer to the road, which could provide a quicker escape if Bee needed it. They both watched as the other Autobots quickly took out the Stunticons.

Each one of the Autobots seemed to have different styles of fighting. Optimus used his massive size and strength to his advantage. Arcee relied on her arsenal of cannons and other weapons to take down the Decepticons, although she did seem to have quite a bit of strength behind her. Ratchet was using his buzz saw to slice through the 'Cons, which didn't take much to offline them. Sideswipe had the most interesting style to watch. He looked like an acrobat flipping and spinning around the Stunticon, it was like he was toying with it. Sortie was impressed to say the least.

But the fight was over almost as soon as the rest of the Autobots showed up. The Stunticons transformed and took off into the woods, the remaining ones anyway. Two more of the Cons were dead. Even though they were robots, the sight of the two mangled bodies was unsettling. The smaller one at least still resembled a Cybertronian, the larger one had been reduced to a smoldering heap of scrap metal.

"How many times did you put this one off line, Arcee?" Sideswipe asked, nudging the Con with his foot.

"I had to be thorough. His cannon kept firing even after his spark went out." She replied, shrugging.

Spark. That was something else that Sortie was going to have to ask Ratchet about. So far she was still unsure about how she managed to have human and cybertronian and human blood running in her veins without catastrophic effects. Now there was this spark thing that they kept talking about. It must have had something to do with the allspark, considering their names were almost the same.

Sortie rolled her shoulder, it was sore, probably from stabbing her arm into that Stunticon's hood. The Autobots seemed to have minor injuries too. Arcee was pressing on a decent sized gash on her left forearm. Ratchet had a chunk of metal stuck in his buzz saw that he was trying to pry out. Bee was in the worst condition, but he wasn't severely damaged.

"Come here Bee." Ratchet said, taking out his allspark key again.

Bee limped over to him, the worst injury was on the back of his left leg. Ratchet stuck the key in his right arm and twisted it ninety degrees. Bee's wounds healed most of the way up, but not entirely.

"Why did his wounds not fully heal?" Sortie asked.

"Because he is a lot bigger than you. The amount of energy that one rev contains is more than enough energy to heal you fully. But it isn't enough to completely heal Bee. The key would heal even less on some one Sideswipe's or Optimus's size." Ratchet explained.

Sortie nodded in reply.

"Does anyone else need the key? Or can you settle for a basic fixing?" The medic bot asked.

The other autobots shook their heads.

It took an hour for Ratchet to fix the bots injuries. Bumblebee sat in dead silence the whole time with a guilty look on his face. Sortie guessed that he was beating himself up over storming off right into the Stunitcons. She sat down next to him and waited for the other bots.

At around 1 o'clock Optimus decided that they needed to keep moving. Pittsburg was the next city on their list of destinations. If they didn't stop, they could make it in about six and a half hours. The bots transformed and Sideswipe popped his passenger side door. Sortie scrambled in and the door shut behind her. The entourage of cars weaved through the trees and back onto the road.

They drove in incredibly uncomfortable silence; even Sortie could tell that the tension in the group was running high. No one was talking, or swerving around the road, or even playing music. There was just deafening silence. Sortie shifted around, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling. Six hours suddenly seemed like infinity that was getting ready to drag into forever. Sortie tried examining her robotic hand more closely to kill time, but when she looked back up at the clock and only two minutes had passed.

"I'm sorry I ran off." Bumblebee said over the comm. Link.

"It's fine, just don't do it again." Ratchet replied.

"No, it was stupid. I have the coordinates to the Allspark, I have to be more careful." He said.

The silence returned. It was evident that none of the bots were good with words.

Sortie felt her stomach fill with butterflies before blurting, "For what it's worth, I thought you did a good job fighting the Stunticons by yourself."

_Why did I say that? I am the last person in this group to be voicing my opinion about fighting ability. _

"She is right, Bumblebee, for being a youngling, you did remarkably well fighting four Decepticons on your own." Optimus added.

"Really? Thanks!" He exclaimed.

She could practically hear him smiling through the comm. Link.

"I guess all that early morning practice pays off." Sideswipe remarked, a little snidely.

"Sadly, I think all of that morning practice was what kept me from getting turned into scrap metal." Bee said.

Arcee snickered into the comm. Link. "I told you so." She taunted.

"Hey!" Bee shouted in protest, his headlights flickered on and off.

"Do NOT start fighting again!" Ratchet ordered. "I will not be doing anymore repair jobs today."

Then Sideswipe turned the comm. Link off. "So how are you adjusting to the madness?" He asked.

"It's not too bad. You guys would make a very interesting case study." She replied.

"Oh come on, we're not that bad."

"You're not bad, just interesting."

"I could say the same for you."

"I feel kinda bad for you guys."

"Why?"

"Well, the first earthling you have had to deal with is me. I'm not exactly the greatest person to represent all of humanity."

"Well, with the exception of Optimus, we are not the best Autobots either."

"That's not true. I…I like you guys."

"I'm flattered." Sideswipe replied, sarcasm hinting in his tone.

Sortie just shook her head and smiled. It felt nice to admit that she liked them, despite the fact that she had only known them for a few days. She liked the less than perfect group dynamic that they had. It was so different from everything else she had experienced. She didn't feel pressured to be perfect. The bots all had their flaws and didn't hide them.

But even with her growing appreciation for the Autobots and feeling of obligation to help protect earth and find the Allspark, she still couldn't shake the feeling that, deep down inside, she really wanted to be back at Yale with Allie. She wanted her PhD. She had worked so hard to get where she was only to have it ripped away by this sudden detour to save the world.

_Stop complaining, Sortie. You can always go back. If you just explained what happened, I'm sure they'd let you back in. Yeah, right. They will definitely believe all of this. _


End file.
